MidEast Policy—Immigration Policy: Is The Other Boot About To Drop?

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Almost 3 ½ years ago I published
Thinking about Neoconservatism,
analyzing the neoconservative movement in the context of
my studies of the behavior pattern of Jewish groups
in the societies where they live. I concluded
neoconservatism was the latest of a long procession
of political and intellectual movements dominated and
essentially controlled by members of the Jewish
community, in effect dedicated to a particular concept
of how to promote the interests of that community. I
specifically cited foreign policy and immigration as
hallmark interests.

At the time, and for a couple of years later, this was
an unmentionable theory. I am told certain prominent web
sites stopped linking to VDARE.com after my
essay was published. The
malign presence of the SPLC (the “Southern
Poverty Law Center”, a notorious
ethnically-oriented Political Correctness enforcer)
was soon felt on the scene, not coincidentally, and
it named VDARE.COM a “hate group”, a sobriquet
more normally associated with groups advocating violence
and other forms of illegality.

But now public debate has changed considerably. Serious
antiwar commentary routinely connects the Iraq/Iran
policy problem with the influence of Israel and her
friends in America. (See
here and
here and
here.)

The vast majority of Americans live under the
comfortable illusion that theirs is a free country. They
suppose that issues are openly and honestly debated in
the newspapers and on talk shows. In this imaginary
world, all issues affecting public policy are on the
table and are constantly scrutinized by the best and the
brightest.

But that is simply not the case. In fact, I would go so
far as to argue the opposite—that virtuallyall
of the really critical issues affecting the United
States and its role in the world are actually excluded
from discussion in the elite media or in the political
arena.

The classic case: US policy in the Middle East. Despite
the obvious fact that US support for Israel has crucial
implications for war and peace, the vast majority of
Americans are oblivious to what is really going on in
this region.

Most Americans would be appalled to learn the truth
about what former President Jimmy Carter
terms“the abominable oppression and persecution
in the occupied Palestinian territories, with a rigid
system of required passes and strict segregation between
Palestine`s citizens and Jewish settlers in the West
Bank.” Carter calls attention to the “enormous
imprisonment wall … now under construction, snaking
through what is left of Palestine to encompass more and
more land for Israeli settlers.” (Los Angeles
Times, December 8 2006).

Carter`s recent book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid,
and his courageous defense of it, seem finally to be
triggering a newly open discussion of Israeli actions
and Jewish influence in the U.S. Coming on the heels of
the work of the University of Chicago`s John Mearsheimer
and Harvard University`s Stephen Walt on the
Israel Lobby, it highlights many of the same issues.
Indeed, Carter has explicitly endorsed Mearsheimer and
Walt`s conclusion that American policy in the Middle
East does not reflect genuine American interests, but
instead those of the Israel Lobby. (Carter
Shares Insight On Peace In Mideast, by Marty
Rosen, Coastal Post, January 3 2007)

This is why it is possible to hope that the role of
Jewish influence in promoting the epochal change
inaugurated by the
1965 Immigration Act might also now be discussed
openly and honestly

Carter is
quite clear that open discussion of Israel`s
policies in the U.S. has been suppressed:

“This reluctance to
criticize any policies of the Israeli government is
because of the extraordinary lobbying efforts of the
American-Israel Political Action Committee and the
absence of any significant contrary voices. It would be
almost politically suicidal for members of Congress … to
suggest that Israel comply with international law or to
speak in defense of justice or human rights for
Palestinians…. What is even more difficult to comprehend
is why the editorial pages of the major newspapers and
magazines in the United States exercise similar
self-restraint, quite contrary to private assessments
expressed quite forcefully by their correspondents in
the Holy Land.”

In fact, it is not at all difficult to comprehend
how this regime of “self-restraint” is
maintained. President Carter himself, and Profs.
Mearsheimer and Walt, point to pressure by the Israel
Lobby on the media, consequent media self-censorship,
and the intimidation of dissidents.

Carter`s book has created the astounding spectacle of a
former president of the United States and Nobel Peace
Prize winner being called an anti-Semite, being
condemned by mainstream Jewish organizations such as the
ADL and the
Simon Wiesenthal Center, and having his offers to
give talks at major universities with high Jewish
enrollment rejected. The saga of the book`s treatment on
Amazon has been
a farce.

I
focus on Foxman`s comments because he heads a mainstream
Jewish activist organization and thus reflects the
opinions of at least a major component of the organized
Jewish community. (It has
long been noticed that there is a gap between the
attitudes of the majority of American Jews and the
attitudes of the established Jewish leaders. This is
especially apparent on issues such as the
neoconservative agenda of regime change in the Middle
East and support of expansionist right-wing governments
in Israel.)

The point here is that the Jewish Establishment will
strongly resist any discussion of Jewish influence or
dual loyalty in any area of public policy, no matter how
judicious and factually-based it may be. These Jewish
leaders have a strong sense of history. They know that
Jews have repeatedly become elites in European
societies. But they also realize thatJewish
power and influence and dual loyalty have been
potent themes of anti-Semitismthroughout
the ages. And they know that increases in Jewish power
and influence have often been followed by the rise of rise of anti-jewish movements

spearheaded
by people whose interests have been damaged by that
Jewish power and influence.

The strategy used by
the Jewish Establishment is not to condemn the neocons
for acting on their strong emotional and ethnic ties to
Israel and manipulating the Bush administration into the
disaster of Iraq and a looming war with Iran. Nor is it
to urge that the Israel Lobby be scaled back in an
effort to bring it more in line with a reasonable view
of American interests. Rather, they go into the full
blown smear and intimidation mode.

Hence the fury among
Jewish activists when General Wesley Clark blurted our
that “New York money people” are gung-ho for
bankrolling politicians who will support US involvement
in a war against Iran; and that talk of a war with Iran
is common in Israel. As Matthew Iglesias, himself
Jewish,
notes: “Everything Clark said … is true. What`s
more, everybody knows it`s true.” (American
Prospect, January 23, 2007). But, as we should know
by now, truth is irrelevant here.

Partly this is because, thus far, these tactics have
been tremendously effective. The American Jewish
Establishment will not change these tactics until they
stop working. After all, it is a long road from
widespread discussion on the internet and occasional
mentions in the above-ground media to having a real
influence on the President and in the halls of Congress.
There, change will be much slower.

This is especially true given the very large role of
Jewish money in
funding the newly-resurgent Democrats. On the
Republican side, as Scott McConnell
has argued, the neocons may be down, but they are
far from out. And they are still pushing for
war against Iran.

I
think too that the American Jewish leadership no longer
has the flexibility to use any other strategy. The
radical expansionists, often motivated by religious and
ethnic fanaticism, have long been in control in
Israel—since 1967 really. They are the vanguard of the
Jewish community, and as usual, they they pull the rest of the Jewish community with them.
The
moderates (aka “self-hating Jews”) have been
shoved aside and do not really count any more.
Similarly, the organized Jewish community in America is
dominated by the expansionists. Jews who do not sign on
to Israel`s expansionist agenda arerelegated to the
fringes.

Indeed, one of the arguments of
Mearsheimer and Walt is that Israel would be far
better off if it could not persuade Washington to
support its expansionist agenda. And reasonable Jews
like
Jerome Slater are wondering what it takes to
“save Israel from itself”:

“The real
issue is the willed ignorance—the psychological
need not to know—of our community. The price—to the
Palestinians, to the Israelis, and to American national
security—is already unbearable, and it may well soon
become apocalyptic.”

These
comments bring to mind historian Albert Lindemann`s
statement in his book Esau`s Tears
(P535)

“Jews
actually do not want to understand their past—or
at least those aspects of their past that have to do
with the hatred directed at them, since understanding
may threaten other elements of their complex and often
contradictory identities.”

Whether it`s about the past or the present, the pattern
among Jews is self-deception
and
willful ignorance.

“Most important for
the content of immigration reform, the driving force at
the core of the movement, reaching back to the 1920s,
were Jewish organizations long active in opposing racial
and ethnic quotas… Following the shock of the Holocaust,
Jewish leaders had been especially active in Washington
in furthering immigration reform. To the public, the
most visible evidence of the immigration reform drive
was played by Jewish legislative leaders, such as
Representative Celler and Senator Jacob Javits of New
York. Less visible, but equally important, were the
efforts of key advisers on presidential and agency
staffs. These included senior policy advisers such as
Julius Edelson and Harry Rosenfield in the Truman
administration, Maxwell Rabb in the Eisenhower White
House, and presidential aide Myer Feldman, assistant
secretary of state Abba Schwartz, and deputy attorney
general Norbert Schlei in the Kennedy-Johnson
administration.”
(pp. 56–57)

In the past year, there has been much discussion of
illegal immigration. It tapped into a very large
reservoir of public anger about the lack of control of
our borders and, I think, the transformations that
immigration is unleashing. The fact that illegal
immigration is, after all, illegal made it difficult to
keep off the public radar (What part of illegal don`t
you understand??).

But this contrasts with almost no discussion at all in
the Mainstream Media of the question of the 1,000,000
or so legal immigrants that come to the U.S. every
year—no discussion of their effect on the economy,
social services, crime and competition at elite
universities; no discussion of their effect on the long
term ethnic composition of the U.S. and the displacement
of native populations in various sectors of the economy;
and no discussion of whether most Americans really want
all of this. (They
don`t.) The fact that large scale legal immigration
causes exactly the same difficulties as large scale
illegal inflow is a non-subject.

Those who question the power and influence of the Israel
Lobby are quickly labeled anti-Semites. The terms of
choice for anyone who thinks the U.S. should have any
restrictions at all on immigration are “racist“
and “nativist“.

It is exactly the same routine: Media self-censorship,
pressure on the media and politicians who stray from
official orthodoxy, and intimidation via labeling,
anathematizing, and ultimately loss of
livelihood.

But the two issues of Israel and immigration relaxation
(in the U.S.) have in common a deep and straightforward
Jewish commitment to particular policies. My contention
is that both policies have been construed by Jewish
leaders as being helpful to the security and political
influence of their community.

In the case of Israel, this is self-evident. In the case
of immigration policy, there
ample documentation[PDF]
of a consistent interest by the Jewish community, both
in America and in
Europe, in ending the hegemony of the host community
amongst whom they live. The measures taken to enforce
their chosen objectives suggest there is indeed an element of truth in what Foxman dismisses as
“the old canard and conspiracy theory of Jewish control
of the media, Congress, and the U.S. government”.

and
the Middle East elsewhere. This has been extremely
unwelcome. And it is not at all surprising that the
Jewish community would strenuously resist these
conclusions.

Nevertheless, on foreign policy matters what is going on has
obviously become increasingly apparent to a lot of smart
people with intellectual integrity.

As the incoming 110th Congress starts up, a
crucial question will be if this new comprehension will
dawn in an area in which, I believe, it is even more
critical: America`s post-1965
immigration disaster.

Kevin MacDonald [email
him] is Professor of Psychology at California State
University-Long Beach. For his website, click